Raising Hell: Christianity's Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire

by Julie Ferwerda

This is how Calvinists and Arminianists are reading the same Bible, yet coming away with completely different impressions of the core teachings.

For instance, one day the thought occurred that, if hell is really true, and God is actually losing most of His creation to evil and darkness, you could say that good is overcome, and darkness overtakes light. Ultimately, Satan wins the tug-of-war over creation, and God loses. What a terrifying thought—how did I ever get through life with such a fatalistic view?

I believe mainly what Bart is getting at is that, in light of most people “going to hell,” their suffering in this world makes no sense.

He goes on to express his utter contempt of the idea that a God would torture people 30 trillion years for sins they committed over the course of thirty years, referring to a god like that as a “divine Nazi.”[22]

them. As a result, orthodox Christianity would have you believe that more than 90% of God’s own creation is headed for everlasting doom because He’s not all that “mighty to save.”

But is this what the Scriptures teach or how God portrays Himself? Does He stay angry and keep a record of wrongdoings forever?[*******]

Psalm 103:8–10: “Pitying and merciful is the Lord; lenient and full of mercy. Not unto the end shall He be provoked to anger, nor into the eon (age) will He cherish wrath. Not according to our lawless deeds did He deal with us; nor according to our sins did He recompense to us” (Septuagint).

Though some people may try to make a case that these verses only applied to Israel, why should He show favoritism and forgive some people’s lawlessness and heal their apostasy, but not others?

But not once do you find “spiritual death,” at least not in the way it is taught in church today.

Zech. 13:9: “And I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested (note the word “tested” in association with fire and gold—just like the Revelation passage above).”

One of my favorites is from Zephaniah 3:8–9 (when translated correctly), where you see the nations and all the earth devoured by fire. Does God tell us why people are devoured by fire (from the Septuagint)? “Wait for me,” says the Lord, “for the day of my resurrection, for a testimony! For my judgment shall be for gathering of nations, to take kings, to pour out upon them all my passion—the passion of my desire. For all the earth shall be consumed by the fire of my zeal. For then I will transfer upon the peoples one tongue for her generation, for all to call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him under one yoke.”

Is God’s own creation spinning out of His control? Does man’s “free will” or even Satan’s will trump God’s will in the end? If you believe that billions of people are headed toward everlasting separation from God in fiery torment, perhaps most of them out of ignorance, or because of their bad or misinformed choices, or because Satan successfully deceived them, you essentially believe that Satan wins and God loses.

David says: The Lord does what pleases Him, His plans stand through all generations (Ps. 33:10–11; 135:6).

“I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance” (Is. 45:23).

“So is My Word that goes out of my mouth: It will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire, and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11, NIV).

“My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure…I have planned it, surely I will do it” (Is. 46:10–11).

If all these verses are true, we can only conclude one of two things. Either God wills for most of His children to suffer eternal loss, or God wills for them to be brought back and reconciled to Himself. E...

Part 2 Love Does Not Fail… (1 Corinthians 13:8)

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” –Isaiah 49:15

Loving parents only intend good for their children. No good parent ever asks, “How can I ruin my kids’ lives today?” Our kids may see our discipline that way, but ultimately everything we do is with the intent of helping them become successful, contributing members of society with the ability to nurture loving relationships throughout their lives. Could God’s intent be any less for His children?

“He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever.[*********] He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:9–10, NIV).

note forever here, same as other words for forever

It is true that sometimes as parents we have to take a heavy hand with our children, causing pain or separation of relationship for a time. Ultimately however, our deepest desire is to weed out rebellion.

We don’t realize how double-minded we sound to the world when we say that God loves them unconditionally, yet if they don’t pray a certain prayer before they die, this love becomes very conditional and temporary.

Romans 10:9: “That if EVER you should be avowing with your mouth Jesus is Lord and should be believing in your heart that God rouses him out of the dead ones, you shall be being saved” (MLT).

God asks me to forgive my enemies, to be kind to them, to show them mercy, and to overcome their evil with good, yet He’s ultimately not going to forgive His enemies, to be kind to them, to show them mercy, or to overcome their evil with good?

Why do we believe that death magically makes God’s love and mercy disappear for most of His children, especially when Scripture teaches that Jesus defeated death for all, the evidence to be seen in due season?

He wouldn’t possibly be asking forgiveness or showing love to people He was planning to condemn to hell forever.

There is somerhing here but it's not articulated quite right.

“Let’s put the shoe on the other foot and talk about the Jews Hitler killed. Were they believers in Christ?”

is it possible that these types of people have been appointed roles in The Story for the very purpose of demonstrating to us the limitlessness of God’s patience and love, when He one day overcomes their heinous acts and deranged character with good? I never quite understood Romans 9 until I was able to put on these new lenses, but now I see the whole chapter addressing this very idea:

It should be getting clearer that some kind of judicial process is going on in the coming ages. What need would there be for Jesus and His chosen to be ruling and reigning over people if the “unsaved” were sent to hell and the rest were a faithful, unified body of believers?

Paul addressed this when he said, “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world will be judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life” (1 Cor. 6:2–3)?

If you are like me, and you don’t have a Calvinist bent, perhaps you have wondered how everyone on earth could possibly have had the same fair opportunity to hear about and believe in Jesus before they die. If you haven’t asked that question, perhaps it’s because you’ve had a pretty fair chance to hear and have disregarded the fact that most of the rest of the world hasn’t.

If you ascribe to Calvinism, it’s miraculously coincidental that most of the “elect” are born into the same general geographic location.

Too many people try to divorce God’s love from His justice. Sure, He demands and requires justice. But tell me, how could torturing someone endlessly, even for the most grievous behaviors over the course of eighty years, be considered fair?

The fact is that God knew the end from the beginning. He was not taken by surprise. He dug that pit and left it uncovered because He had a plan, and the plan called for man to fall.

There are, however, several verses that are, by design, constructed in such a way that even the skeptics cannot credibly deny that all means ALL.

If we are going to say that the “all” who will be justified into life through Jesus are not really all, then we are going to have to admit that the condemnation brought about by Adam’s sin does not affect everybody either.

It’s crazy to think that anyone would bow in submission to God and give Him acceptable, legitimate praise under coercion on his or her way to everlasting torment. The Scriptures are clear that…

1899 book you’ve probably never heard your pastor read from in church, Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During its First Five Hundred Years:

It is well known by those who have studied early Church writings, that [Universal Reconciliation] was the majority view. In fact, it was practically the only view for the first few centuries after Christ and the apostles. The early Church had quite a number of doctrinal disputes, but the universality of salvation was not even disputed. In fact, it was taught by all the major theologians of the day in the churches that the Apostle Paul founded.

Seems exaggerated.

One other very influential theologian was Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428). He asked, “Who is so great a fool as to believe that God would resurrect men merely to destroy them forever with torments?” (Fragment IV).

A good point.

…Most of my ideas of the love and goodness of God have come from my own experience as a mother, because I could not conceive that God would create me with a greater capacity for unselfishness and self-sacrifice than He possessed Himself…

Nothing else matters like this, for all our salvation depends wholly and entirely upon what God is; and unless He can be proved to be absolutely good, and absolutely unselfish, and absolutely just, our case is absolutely hopeless.

Like its English counterpart, “age,” the word aion is defined as “a period of time with a beginning and an end.”

How could all the families of the earth possibly be blessed through the fulfillment of this promise unless Jesus (The “Second Adam”) reversed the effects of any kind of curse for all physical offspring of the First Adam? It would be otherwise impossible to take God at His word that all families for all time could benefit from this covenant blessing.

What is the job of seed? It is to be planted in order to bring forth fruit. This spiritual “seed of Abraham” will be planted among the rest to bring a fruit-bearing harvest of all peoples, blessing all families of the earth.

All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before You. For the kingdom is the Lord’s and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, all those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, even he who cannot keep his soul (self) alive (Psalm 22:27–29).

I’m sure you were able to identify the two predominant views of modern Christianity (Arminianism and Calvinism) in how God utilizes His own crops.

Terrible analogy for both.

These kinds of crucial questions demand satisfactory answers—if we are ever to deem the character of God worthy of our trust.

He boldly states to Isaiah (45:7): “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (KJV). Some people (and many modern translations) will try to explain away this verse, saying that what it really means is that God allows evil, not that He actually creates it. The Hebrew word used here for create (bara) is the same word used in Genesis 1:1, so following their logic we’d have to say that, “in the beginning, God allowed the heavens and the earth.”